I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Backfire

So when I got logged into EVE tonight, there was absolutely nothing going in in my home constellation in Syndicate.

Sorry. Too soon? ;-)

OK, for those like myself who couldn't make it to today's EVE live event(1), from what I've been able to piece together from talking to a lot of people that were there, the idea behind the event was essentially this:

There were two high-sec staging systems. There were two target "pirate" systems -- 8V-SJJ and RMOC-W -- both in null-sec, one under control of the Serpentis in Syndicate, the other under the control of the Angel Cartel in Curse. Both target pirate systems had nearby high-sec entry systems.

The two high-sec staging systems seem to have been chosen for the fact that they were mid-way between the two target pirate systems: they were about 25 jumps from either one.

EVE players that wished to attack the pirate systems were gathered in the two high-sec staging systems under the overall command of what appear to have been four NPC actors playing ships from each of the Empire factions. All four Empire NPC actors were killed, Gallente, Amarr, Caldari, and Minmatar. They directed traffic into the target systems.

From what I've been able to gather, the EVE players that chose to attack the pirate systems were overwhelmingly biased toward high-sec players, many of whom who had never PvP'ed before. They came expecting a CCP-run live event.

Late in the proceedings, EVE players that wished to defend the pirate systems were invited to form up in two other staging systems quite near the two target systems. From what I've been able to gather, the EVE players that chose to defend the pirate systems were overwhelmingly biased toward null-sec and FW PvP corps and alliances.

This second group came expecting an op. And they treated it like an op... with all that implies. More on this in a second.

For the group that left Sarum Prime and traveled to RMOC, the fast ships that made up this lead group soon formed a rolling ball some several hundred ships strong which rapidly reduced about two-thirds of the systems along the route to 10% TiDi.

Because TiDi didn't affect the target system, this gave the "defenders" more than an hour lead time to do two things: thoroughly infiltrate the "attacker" fleets, and set up an enormous kill box around the entry gate to RMOC in the system of Doril.

This TiDi and the long delay associated with it had another effect: it caused a number of the heaviest ships in the "attacker" fleets to abandon the event before reaching the target system.

Even before the heavy ships that didn't abandon the event had arrived, the attacker fleets were ordered by the four NPC actors to jump the entry gates into null-sec. Where this didn't happen, null-sec infiltrators among the attacker fleets ordered them into the most dangerous scenarios possible. For instance, one high-sec fleet was ordered to warp directly to a bubbled beacon by their FC who then promptly abandoned that fleet to its fate and joined another fleet to kill them. In another example, Goon infiltrators told the attacker fleets the entry gate into Syndicate was clear when it was in fact heavily camped.

And there, the attackers were more or less roundly slaughtered before the defender fleets turned on both the 40 or so pirate NPC actors I've been able to identify (about 20 each of Angel Machariels and Serpentis Vindicators) and each other.

The end result? In Curse as far as I can tell, some 1500 ships and 1000 pods died in Doril. Several hundred made it to the target system, RMOC-W, and died there instead. I've not found any evidence that the "goal" of the event was accomplished; most of the ships that died in RMOC were quite light.

In Syndicate, instead of heavily camping the entry system of PF-346, the "defenders" instead grouped together and elected to hold the line in 8V-SJJ where about 1000 ships and 700 pods were killed. I can't find anyone who can tell me whether the "goal" was met in Syndicate either.

Whew! OK. I've probably made a few mistakes here and there, but that was the gist of the event. If you came expecting an overwhelmingly important event in EVE's lore with the four empires joining forces en masse to attack the pirate threat, you almost certainly left disappointed.

Anyway, needless to say the "defenders" had a fantastic time; many got several hundred easy kills out of the event. But while a few of the "attackers" are being good sports about it, the more general opinion from them is that CCP... let me find the appropriate colorful metaphor... here it is. As one post about the event put it, "The event was basically CCP ramming a cactus up the asses of the [high-sec players involved in the event]." Does this event have a threadnaught? You bet it has a threadnaught. And it's up to 18 pages so far in just nine hours. I've read every single post in this thread. It's the source of the quote of the week, from the null-sec defender perspective:

High-sec player: Waste of my time. Hours of TiDi traveling around to not be able to actually get to the event due to a massive gate camp.
Null-sec player: Welcome to our regular Tuesday night.

That's Kismeteer of Goonswarm, cheerfully expressing the null-sec perspective. Mix in a little bit of "HTFU" directed at the high-sec players and that's the defender's perspective in a nutshell.

The attacker's perspective is quite a bit more nuanced. If I had to pick a single post to represent them, it would be this one written by Anubis Aureus. Go take a minute and read it. I'll wait.

Back? OK. The attackers expected a CCP-run live event. Instead to net it out, the attacker's position is that they...

were left by the event organizers to fend for themselves;

were not given adequate instructions on what to do;

were not organized into effective fleets;

were not led by trustworthy FCs; and,

that CCP in essence led a couple of thousand EVE players into a deathtrap from which there was no escape.

And then to add insult to injury, CCP subjected them to 23 jumps of 10% TiDi.

In short: CCP expected them to organize themselves and to play EVE the way we null-sec players have been doing it for years.

Unsurprisingly, they didn't like it, they didn't have fun, and the thread is full of people saying "first live event, last live event." And by that what they really mean is "first time in large scale PvP, last time in large scale PvP" without really realizing it. Was this event intended to get more high-sec players to try out null-sec? Because if it was, I think it backfired massively. Remember how I said the other day that the community is going to become more divisive and insular over the next couple of years? Yup, this. Today's live event made it worse.

Entertainingly, one of the best "good" ideas to come out of this is "next time, let's let the attackers bridge to the target system from CONCORD titans!" I personally find this rather amusing because this is the exact solution that null-sec alliances came up with so that their pilots wouldn't have to deal with the drudgery of actually flying in space.

I hope CCP Eterne and the rest of the organizers of this event take a long hard look at what went wrong and what went right here. I fully support the idea of more live events! I was a big fan of the last one and I thought that was a good example of a live event done right. This one, though? The ball was dropped, and dropped badly. I'm glad those of you who had fun at this one had fun! But a few more live events like this one will kill live events.

155 comments:

I didn't expect effective fleets, I expected a random blob that goes somewhere and dies horribly while having fun shooting someone.

The problem was that CCP set it up in a way that split the players and prevented anything resembling self-organization in fleets. First they announce the move to Ihal on Twitter (and not unambiguously, many thought that only the people that don't get into Sarum should go to Ihal) and not ingame, splitting the people already to some degree. Then around half an hour later they announce it in local and the trek to Ihal begins.

I was there in a BC, and when I arrived the early fleets were already dead and everybody knew that there was a huge camp on the other side. The event was declared over around 10-15 minutes after I arrived in Ihal. By having us move 23 jumps CCP guaranteed that any effective fleet would be too late, and split up the players.

I'm not a high-sec carebear and have done plenty of small-scale/FW, and I would not have minded dying in an unorganized fleet. But I didn't even arrive in time to getting slaughtered, even though I started to move on time (when it was announced in local).

your decision which corp you join decides what kind of gaming experience you get in eve.if you join a large 0.0 powerblock you will get exactly what you have seen to day, just better organized. lots of tidi, lots of waiting, lots of traveling around. but for exchange you get large fights without getting slaughtered

but there are ways for pvp in 0.0 which do not include tidi or jumping around for 2 hours.i know a guy who is realy good at one way of "having fun without the boring parts of 0.0" he is sometimes even in the top 20 most kills list per month without experiencing tidi a single time.

Bullshit anon... you decide your experience... IMO part of the fun in this game is the hours of tedium combined with the moments of stark terror. I love the rush in this game. When you win it means something and when you lose it hurts. Anyone paying attention knew this was going to be a shit show... Got to plan accordingly...

yeah of course you decide, but if you are alone most of the fun things just wont happen.if you join a highsec corp you will never experience large 0.0 fights, you will probably never do billions of isk in c6 wormholes, you wont declare wardecs to 0.0 renter corps to gank their jumpfreighters. you probably wont sit in niarja with 30 destroyer to gank freighters. you wont run a large network of reaction pos and so on.if you want to do one of those things or somethign else you have to group together with people who want to do this as well. and insome cases that means that other game options are getting out of your range forever. (after ganking 100 freighters in highsec you probably wont get your mainchar in to red frog for example.)

I can't help but wonder if this sort of circus act would have happened with CCP Dropbear. CCP's community team has REALLY been fumbling the proverbial "ball" lately. First Somergate, now the great angel turkey shoot? It's like everything they touch turns to shit.

I was one of the highsec players that wanted to join this event and I am very new to eve, just started this july. That said I came prepared to get blown up and podded, I knew that might happen and I was okay with it. What I was not okay with was having to go 20+ jumps from Sarum Prime under 10% TiDi. Still I wanted to participate, even when i heard of the goon camp and saw it via mad_ani's stream. I was okay with all of that. What really really sucked was that the whole damn event was over when I reached the gate behind which the camp was setup. I had spend more than an hour in heavy TiDI, like many other, and ccp fcs didnt even wait for at least some portion of the players that were incoming before they went into null?

Does this mean it was the last ccp event I'll take part in? I don't know, I'm really waiting for some kind of statement by ccp how the heck they could fuck this up so much.

I participated in event, but my common sense (and prior 0.0 experience) warned me not to jump into Doril and I was right. Though I did spend 2h in TiDi travelling there.

What saddens me is business perspective. I like EVE and I want to do it well - also financially. This event completely alienated bunch of high-sec players and might lead to bunch of unsubscriptions, while not providing anything special for 0.0 players - as quoted, "just another Thursday". It was so badly planned and incompetent that it's hilarious.

CCP: The whole KW-I6T thing really upset the null blobs. We need to make it up to them.NULL BLOBS: Feed us easy targets. It's what we crave.CCP: OK master. Your wish is our command.NULL BLOBS: Omnomnom

I wouldn't be as forgiving to the CCP employees involving in this as you.

What they did was absolutely the same what the rogue PL FC did with the Revenant and a supercarriers: * they formed a fleet under the guise of authority and loyalty* they made sure that reds have all means to organize the death trap by giving them every intel and giving them time to form up* they made their fleet believe that they have an FC and they are just on their way for some "fun event" without real danger* when the trap was activated, they dropped fleet and removed all means of self-organization. Due to lack of comms, you can't even repeat the famous quote "more than one motherfuckers had mouth".

CCP employees practically acted as spies for nullsec entities in the largest size (not surely largest ISK value) awox in EVE history. While the PL FC has the right to awox and work for BL, CCP employees should not work for any player entities.

I believe the ships lost in the attacker fleets should be reimbursed and the employees involved in it should be fired from CCP for clear favoritism.

As "nullsec" and "Goon" are practically interchangeable in the carebear dictionary, without firing them, there will be no way to remove the "CCP devs are working for Goons" stigma, despite the fact that Goons were barely involved in the slaughter.

Desclaimer: I had no ships in either fleets, my whole involvement was crossing the fleet's way in highsec for two jumps. In 10% Tidi. In a freighter.

Next time CCP will do better. Get EVE uni, Agony, Brave Newbies and perhaps some null FC from PL/BL to lead fleets and add some decent support wings.Make use of a wormhole or titan bridge to move players. Empire factions can have access to titans, high sec players will get to see and use these ships which will be a first for many players.

As a side note: the time of the empires is over, capsuleer alliances have the power. The next step is high sec alliances that are the equal of null alliances in organization, support, logistics that will take over the role of the failing empires.

I was really looking forward to this and wondered what was going on.I got into fleet at the right time but when I was told to make 23 jumps... After making it to the lowsec gate my will had already been crushed by the trip. Word was also starting to come in that we missed whatever the event was. I still don't know what this event was.When I was told to jump the gate I knew what was waiting on the other side... I am not a lamb to CCP's slaughter.... so instead of jumping I simply logged off.

My story is about the same, except for the epilogue - I wanted a fight, and for fuck sake I would get a fight. I jumped straight in and got tackled and oneshotted. Didn't get a second shot out of my cannons before the pod was ejected.I came knowing I would lose the ship - at least THAT wasn't a disappointment.

I know that what I’m writing is just minutiae, and it’s from my limited perspective of a member of Ganked (RvB fleet). Still, some fun facts.

First I don't think there was a lot of people deliberately supporting pirate factions. There were just few fleets from different null and low-sec alliances that came for a fun PvP op and some slaughter of empire denizens. They were as eager to fight each other as to camp fleets coming from empire. It seems entirely possible that the facility that was destroyed – albeit too late – was brought down by them. RvB fleet came with the same goal; nobody in it really cared for the facility we were meant to destroy or defend, and we have visited the site only to try to chew on some Darkside BCs engaging some other fleet on grid.

On the Sarum -> Ihal -> Doril side there were at least six more or less major fleets formed in high-sec. Two fleets of random players for armor and shield recruited through Sarum Prime (and then Doril) local; The Valhalla Project fleet of Rokhs (incursion community); two CCP-run fleets they recruited themselves; RvB ganked fleet.I don’t know the fate of TVP fleet: I’ve seen them undock in Sarum shortly after CCP has announced the move to Ihal on twitter. I think they got caught in TiDi and were unable to reform properly at Ihal.

RvB fleet got into Ihal more or less successfully and was in practice at least 80 strong AF and T1 cruiser fleet with some logistics support (with 135-140 in the fleet, but some lost in TiDi). Mangala Solaris’s tactics was to let other major fleets move out first for them to serve as meat shield, and some of the fleet members were trying to confuse at least some people into jumping mimicking CCP in-character announcements. CCP organizers had roleplaying names, so that was even easier with the use of chat links to mimic yellow color of their text. Because of this tactics we reached the site successfully but late in the game when other empire fleets reaching it were already slaughtered, and Darkside attack BCs were engaging some other fleet there. Was it RAZOR or INIT? I don’t remember.

I’ve seen CCP organizers receiving applications to their own fleets, but I don’t think they were going to FC them. It seems they delegated that role to spies or simply incompetent people and sent the ‘go’ signal. This has predictably turned into a massacre. I must admit that even not being there, I felt bad for the people who joined them, since it did look particularly cruel to the participants for CCP organizers to recruit a fleet, and then not lift a finger to organize it or even save it. I also find it hilarious that after inviting capsuleers to ‘join [the empires] in this assault’ there weren’t even any NPC to help with base assault even when it was apparent their ‘operation’ was falling apart. The last sentence was from lore perspective.

Two local-formed fleets for shield and armor were mostly lost to lag, and by some reports were only 40 strong upon reaching Ihal. Most never jumped into low-sec, and those who did were quickly dispatched by goons or RAZOR.

For a member of RvB fleet, the event was very fun, even if our fleet wasn’t very successful beyond avoiding camps. We couldn’t break through Darkside logistics, and lost people on every engagement, but when a vote for going home safely or staying until the very end went out, most chose the latter, to my own delight.

Was the CSM consulted for the execution of this event? (I am pretty sure the answer is "no")Wasn't there in person but corpmate was there. Same story, an almost unarmed and unorganized crowed hitting a trained military blockade.It happened what always happens if unarmed men encounter those with guns.

The long travel time was totally unnecessary they could have simply formed closer to the entry point AND REINFORCE that damn nodes. -.-Also 4 Empire NPC leaders and 20 Pirate NPC Machas/Vindis? A bit out of balance.

Well maybe THAT teaches CCP that there PvE content is too far from PvP. The default PvE ratter (Mission or anomaly) doesn't get an idea of logistics or why they would be helpful. They have a lot of opportunities to bombard this learning cliff with new and improved content.

Poor lambs. I don't call any area of eve space home. Lowsec seems to be the easiest place to hang out and do you own thing. I mention this to highlight my lonely existence.People, especially the uninitiated, should not come away from an event thinking WTF, what just happened? The impressionable expect to be handed victory by the gods of good. What happened was very real and very cold.I sincerely hope that CCP achieved what it set out to here. At the very least I hope that they had eyes recording every detail of the slaughter to add to the cannon of lore. Else; "WTF, what just happened?"

Here's the thing - if you make the empires hostile to null, then null needs the ability to respond. A small fleet of maybe half a dozen titans and less than 200 craft turned CONCORD HQ into space dust - a far cry from the thousands of nullseccers (scap pilots included) who would turn out in droves to turn Empire into their bitches. Proportionally, the odds do not work out for Empire if nullsec gets to actually fight. Which they'd have to be allowed to, if you're opening up the sandbox to have the empires and nullsec take each other on. Cynos go up, scaps, caps, and subs jump in, Empire dies in a spectacular hail of fire.

CCP does not have the number of employees, or the skills, to prosecute a large scale war in EVE Online. The Empire fleets (and that's being generous with the term) would be blobbed (not needed, though) and slaughtered, then terms would be imposed. Odds are - for the nullsec empires they'd get to treat all space as nullsec, but be defended by CONCORD and the Empire fleets against all others.

Or all space would become nullsec space (except for noobs) as beating CONCORD and Empire up becomes a rite of passage for player run corporations. Whichever. Alternatively, you're advocating pissing in the sandbox because you're a crying carebear. Whichever.

I was enjoying your reply until the carebear remark. I'll respond to the rest of it, but just wanted to give you that feedback, so that next time you don't spoil a good post :)

What you're assuming is that the Empire fleets would fight on their own. Not that I think they should do this, but what I imagine is the current FW system, where Empire fleets spawn in to destroy opposing capsuleers. This gives defending low skill High sec fleets an edge against invading Null-sec fleets, and extra challenge for Null-seccers.

I sincerely hope they don't go for this option. However, if this wasn't their intention, to create animosity between Empire and Null-sec, then we're left with conspiracy theories or plain incompetence. Either option is bad.

In my experience, getting a reply is far more likely if there's a sincere insult somewhere in the mix. Provocation is a powerful tool to start up an internet debate, and hey! It worked. Far from spoiling the reply, it served its purpose perfectly.

That said - you're making some assumptions here. 1: That a nullsec group at war with Empire still has to contend with artificial highsec rules. Those only exist because of Empire enforcement...something that by definition cannot apply to a group at war with them. This hamstrings anyone who wants to fight for them, and gives an immense advantage to their enemies.

2: That the basic functionality of Concord would continue to exist in some form after this - the whole point of the Concord HQ remark was to make the point that the moment Concord patrol boats become actually balanced....they'll just be mid-end rats. At best.

3. That NPC anything is going to be able to fight in a serious war scale environment. Pardon me while I laugh myself silly before pointing at literally all the NPCs in the game ever.

4. Numbers and organization disparity. Seriously. This cannot be emphasized enough. There's nobody with the command structure (both in and with the tools out of game that those alliances hold so dear) to compete with the 0.0 organizations; outside of 0.0, anyway.

Honestly, there is no way at all CCP is going to go for a 0.0 v 1.0 war. Ever. It would require fundamentally changing and outright breaking the game, in addition to being insanely boneheaded from any number of perspectives.

What they intended, I believe, was for the fluff to say that the Empires called for help because they couldn't take on the 0.0 pirates, but that the Empires didn't say so beforehand due to pride. Unfortunately, instead of a huge pair of purely capsuleer battles showcasing the power of the new class in both the ability to ignore losses and deliver firepower, CCP got a pair of outright massacres.

Mark my words, right now CCP's RP division is doing overtime rewriting the fluff behind the new expansion regardless.

"In short: CCP expected them to organize themselves and to play EVE the way we null-sec players have been doing it for years."

Dude this was suposed be a "Live Event" and they by definition are lore driven event organized by CCP who control actor characters.

Null sec dont give a fa about lore mostly(im sure there are individual people that do in those power blocks and they atended live events in past).

Also saying "organize themselves" "the way we null-sec players have been doing it for years" is ignorant like people that live in high sec(or just stage there beacause it's easier and requires less effort) don't do the same, they are no power blocks that are required to hold few regions of mostly dead space.

Remember Woodstock 1969?First planed to take place in Wallkill, then moved to Bethel, still called Woodstock.~100,000 visitors expected, more then 1 million tried to get there, got stuck and were sent back home by the police. Finally 400,000 arrived... as there weren't enough gates to sell entry tickets, they had to take down security fences and make it a free festival.Soon, noone was able to get to the place or leave it, therefore they had to bring in police, ambulance and bands with helicopters.What was planned to be a profit orientated festival turned into huge losses...

However, difference is: EvE pilots have weapons locked and loaded while Woodstock was considered to be "Peace & Harmony".

Utter waste of time. Idiot CCP could have just bridged a couple of WHs between high and null, rather than making everyone in high sec run 20+ jumps under 10% TiDi. About 1/2 of our corp is made up of new players who said they will never NEVER do that again. And, as for our corp's plan to move to null? Yeah, forget that. This brief taste was enough for over 2/3 of our pilots.

By the time we got to the battle, fleets were scattered across high sec. Many of us ended up just letting our pods get popped, rather than spend even more time jumping all the way back to our home system.

Jester, if you could... please oh please give us a nice little hint about what was going through the mind of the CCP Dev running this. I know it'll be brought up by the CSM.

I mean, one side is setting up bubbles, checking ranges, placing disco, and making bookmarks for possible bombing runs. The other side is explaining broadcast mechanics. One would hope alarm bells was going off in his head. Or did he not read Tennyson?

I was in 8V-SJJ, hardly any highsec guys made it through and it predictably turned into a massive everyone-vs-everyone furball. Still fun from a low/null POV but fer christ sake CCP just bridge people with magic titans next time as suggested.

As a result of my own error, I missed the event, but in retrospect, I'm glad I did. After talking to some participants, I posted about the event on my own blog, and my conclusions are very close to yours - though your post is more thorough, as usual. CCP Explorer confirmed via Twitter that the systems in the live event were, in fact, reinforced, but CCP simply did not expect the large number of participants. Bad planning, bad communications, bad execution. If this is any indication, the future of live events in EVE remains gloomy.

I wonder how many of those high-sec players who brought along their mission ship will end up unsubscribing. It wouldn't surprise me to find that CCP's handling of the event actually costs them subscriptions.

Frankly, I hope CCP loses hundreds of subs. I feel bad for the people unsubbing, but maybe CCP will get it through it's collective head that this fucking path to null sec cartels online is a disaster, and any subs lost in the coming days will be nothing like what will be lost as high sec is handed over to the cartels.

I do not know how many subs they have already lost, but I did get rid of my secondary sub. I still have my main, but I am considering unsubbing that one too, as my faith in CCP is lower than my faith in Funcom ever was (and boy, did those ever screw it up). And I am not alone in my feelings, as this post from EVE forums shows:"I just want to thank CCP, with their recent live event, for helping me realize that this game no longer has anything left for me. My only complaint is that this "live event" was way to elaborate. You could have simply sent me an email telling me to " **** off " and I assure you I would have gotten the hint. Thanks again and have another shot on me."I can understand his feelings completely. He probably was on the much advertised New Player Training at the end of which newbies were told to join the event. The person telling that was CCP Eterne.Now, I do want to advise people to read "Low sec lifestyle" blog's latest (link at this blog's sidebar). It has excellent ideas on how this should have been done. However, I do not think CCP will listen, or that highsec will be existing in a year or so.

to be fair, their last event had about 1200 peeps show up in high sec (when concord departed the system for 24hrs) so they might - MIGHT - have gotten hoodwinked into a more ambitious event maybe - MAYBE - to enhance the motivation for people to join their calender scheduled NPE training events for "teamwork" then "fleet pvp"

I seriously doubt they even have the brains to think about using a high sec titan bridge (mainly because the null sec blob demogogues would irrationally scream 'NOT FAIR WE WANT THE SAME. FAVORITISM!" for months. probably never hear the end of it.

It might be possible that using twitter to start the mantrain to nullsec was designed to lighten the traffic load per system, as was splitting up the starting points...it is also equally possible, though equally unlikely, that CCP was fully aware of the inevitable slaughter and figured since it was going to happen anyways why do any planning other than "go forth young skywalker!"...the only rational explanation is they were afraid of being screamed at for encouraging a 'theme park' environment for carebears who might...just might...get a warped view of how pvp actually works and demand nullsec be defanged...or somesuch mindless troll blather you see on the forums daily by griefers to lazy to actually to more than ship spin.

uhm...CCP really might not be dumb enough to actually cluelessly believe that this event was a resounding success because of the high turnout. period. But i bet they are.

Before I jumped into Meves to take part in the live event I know I was going down in a big ball of flames. I had no illusions that we would be hit by null-sec alliances, smart bombing battleships, bombs, bubbles etc, etc.

The problem is moving the fleet. I was fleeted up with about 15 people to try and get some kills. I arrived in low-sec staging system first " 3 jumps out of 8V-SSJ" flying a t1 cruiser. Had to wait 25 minutes for 5 people to join me due to TIDI. The rest never showed up. When we jumped into system the battle was already about to be called in favour of the defenders and a 200 man attackerfleet was stil not in system for about 20 to 25 minutes.

So i sucided my ship trying to get some kills had a great time doing so. but please next time get a fleet their as a whole not stringed of over an hour and a half due to TIDI. This would make a better time for the attacker aswell as the defender.

I know this has most likely been bandied around somewhere else, but maybe its time for CCP to so something about the mechanics that cause Tidi - I have no idea what that may be, so I cant help there.

Just for some explanation I currently live in Utopia and am part of a Nullsec alliance and have been taking part in most of the ohh so fun 1% tidi fights of late. But even roaming in gangs of 70-100 causes tidi in systems with nobody else in them.

Maybe CCP should skip and update cycle and deal with an even increasing issue??

I would love to be able to make a more constructive comment but I don't have the technical knowhow to do so.

I guess the only real way to make this type of thing not a complete slaughter is to have CCP FC the fleets, but even then you won't get any sort of sanity to your fleet comp.

Regardless, this is the way it's always going to go when you get enough high sec players to a place where PvPers can shoot them. The null alliances will drop everything and be there immediately, because there are few things as entertaining as shooting high sec players.

Scratch that, never mind the victims. What I really want to know is what how does CCP classify the execution of this event. 1 a bridge that should not have been crossed - to - 10 Another day at the office.

What do you THINK went wrong? Step back a few and try looking at the bigger picture. What was the root cause of what went wrong here?

For the first time in 4 years I am completely unsubbed without an active account.Eventually I'll be back (as the governator says) but I think I'm good until the summer 2014 expansion. If they want my money they have to deliver and for 2+ years now all I hear is talk.

Yeah, I have to say I don't have an active account going these days. Dropping minnows into a piranha tank was stupid. Not having the arena in good order was stupid. Not having competent RPers in play to intelligently adept to the situation was Bloody Fucking Unbelievable.THIS is what EVE should be winning at. Not self-congratulating anniversary presents, not space tourism and hidi-holes, not flashy new wheels and pimped ai to drive it.Elite Dangerous is being built from the ground up to run story driven missions for collaborative play. The engines grinding out Star Citizen graphics is on an astronomical order superior to to EVE.If EVE can't get it's shit together I'm going to have a hard time justifying it to myself never mind anybody else.

*scratches head* don't get your references. i spent a bit of time looking up examples of the graphics and i don't see better...i see worse graphics actually. in fact, the graphics i do see look like cutscenes.

and Star Citizen isn't a MMOG at all really, is it? and wikipedia hints at elite dangerous being offline and online capable, sort of.

not my cup of tea, but thanks for reminding me of the future scifi space sims out there.

i dunno, Quandary...yes, it was stupid the way they did it in the first place...but, you knew they were clueless that's why you and anon quit i presume. What i don't get is why give suggestions on "coulda shoulda woulda" when your base assumption is CCP is incompetent in the first place?

I shudder to think about what you consider to be a "arena in good order" (concord? uberships flown by devs?) and the "RP" "intelligently adapting" might mean...what? (cancelling the event cuz the griefers are amassing and coming up with something that leaves them slathering in vain?)

My lapsed accounts have nothing to do with this gaff. I've invested a lot of time and mental energy in EVE and want to see CCP succeed. All the rookie errors in this scenario pain me. There are a lot of very intelligent people employed at the company but apparently no real commitment to the quality of entertainment. True actors know how to improvise, turn glitches in props / game mechs to the story's advantage. However CCP have built a universe where theatre relates solely to combat capability and meaningful communication is relegated to forum dungeons.

What get's my goat the most about this fuck-up is that trips on the tail of trilogy of very avoidable mishaps. Any one of them individually can be reasoned away genially, but taken together they paint a very bleak picture of how CCP views it's customers.

The storyline can still be redeemed with a half-decent tale-spinner pulling the threads together. I hope to gods that they they do, because it's the stories that we are collectively creating that keep me interested. Not who has the most bling or the biggest gang in a drive by shooting.

Feel better about this whole thing after the blog about it, and slightly embarrassed for getting caught up in the brouhaha.I'm reassured that Abarxas is steering the ship and that they are aware of the technical difficulties that tripped them up.The reason for using social media was explained, but that does not make me like the fact that they had to use it.Finally, a "we'll do better" is a bit week at this stage of the game but I guess it's all we can expect.

Given the numbers of people that wanted to participate in this, I hope that CCP wakes up and sees the potential value of running events like this properly. As opposed to crawling back into their anti-lore, players create the content, shell. The fact that so many people that haven't pvp'd, or even left hi sec before, tried to actually go to null sec for this event should be a wake up call on how to actually appeal to a broader audience.

Compare what people probably wanted from this event to what they are getting with Rubicon. Mobile structures to make you more independent from Empires? Or a well structured in game historic event that has its roots in the lore? I like some of the stuff coming in Rubicon, but who are they designing this game for?

The first live "event" i spent with hundreds other peoples, sitting on the gate, looking at "system is full" message. Didn't even bother with second... So its actualy second awfull event for most eve players. Maybe CCP should just stop doing them already. Also they screwed not only participants but half of hisec with 10% TiDI in systems urelated to event.

IMO whoever that was 'organizing' this event from the CCP size should bring his excuses to the EVE community. Listen, you screwed it up. Acknowledge it. Make an excuse. Say that you are sorry for that.Why on Earth player-made events like RVB FFA or FOTR went way more smoothly? And that 23 jump run thru high-sec.... Well, after that trip I was already sure that the entire event is a mess. Just stayed there to see this idiocy to the end and died in RMOC.

[quote]For instance, one high-sec fleet was ordered to warp directly to a bubbled beacon by their FC who then promptly abandoned that fleet to its fate and joined another fleet to kill them.[/quote]

Even more embarrassing than that - the FC wasn't a plant, just really, really bad. He called for the fleet to jump into Doril, burn through bubbles and warp to Planet 4... but he made this call in Local in Sendaya. One of our scouts saw the order (it was in yellow text, so easy to see), so we repositioned ourselves to the called warp-out, bubbled the area to hell and back, and waited. The FC landed with his "victims" then just rage-quit.

It's a shame that it went like this. Most people weren't even close to the system when the event had already ended. The fleet I was in got it's information from the live event channel on where to go.

And in the end I just let myself get blown up in one of the systems because I went out there expecting to be blown up anyhow. Although I did expect to have at least something of a fight I could do something in instead of having CCP fly us into a death trap.

Luckily I wasn't the only one in my normal channel so I got to talk to people for two hours, which lightened the mood a bit

Don't rely on anyone to create content for you and you won't be disappointed. If you want to try null then join a null corp. A CCP event won't show to true null. You can carebear in null all day long mostly uninterrupted if that's what you want. Or fleet up and small gang or even sit on a titan for hours. Player driven content will always be better. Even if the higher ups ping eachother an hour in advance for a thunder dome fight. N3 and CFC tell each other in advance so that at least there will be a fleet Rdy to fight them when they arrive after they jump 50 systems from home.

Jester, I have read everything you write for a while now. Just wanted to say you make everything you write about a pleasure to read even if the subject isn't interesting to me itself. Anyways, about the event today, I don't mind if things flop once in a while, that is the nature of trying new things. CCP can't get everything right all the time and we shouldn't expect them to. Risking a flop is good for the game, or there would be no forward motion. The sad thing for me was it's been so long since the last live event, I'm from Canada so I effectively skipped work to "try" and be a part of what turned out to be nothing. Happens I guess, just hope the next live event happens sooner than later. -Schizomania

I wasn't there man! But surely CCP knew that feeding a massive, useless rag tag army of hi sec players into the jaws of null sec was going to end in tears? I've been playing eight years and if I had known about this at the time, I would have gone nowhere near it. CCP run the game, my eight years is a drop in the ocean to what CCP knows and understands about the mechanics and player base.

The fleets should have had structure imposed on them, proper leadership that understood the limitations of inexperienced players and worked to help them achieve their goals should have been a requisite. And why make the starting point so far away?

I'm not saying that CCP meant to feed all those players through the mincer. Maybe they were just unprepared and incompetent.

Dinsdale...er, Ripard...What's with all the pessimism lately? I'm having a blast in eve online and I usually love your blog for posting interesting/useful content, not doom and gloom. Can you please return to your regular broadcasting? Like, maybe trying posting constructive things like you used to be so good at?

So...the interesting question is whether this was WAI or if CCP dropped the ball.

I have some problems with the second option. How could they not understand the physics of the game and the nature of the playerbase? Stranger things have happened but if I had to place a (tinfoil hat) bet I'd say that CCP is trying to condition the High Sec player for life in Null Sec. Destruction of the NPC Empires? Maybe, more likely moving all profitable activity out of an area (perhaps much reduced) that will be left as a rump training ground for new pilots.

Seems unlikely to me that CCP would voluntarily risk losing (part of) their highsec customer base. I suspect a lot of players simply think highsec activity is what they want to do. Forcing them to do something else may force them out of the game altogether.

The real mystery is what CCP wanted with this, assuming that CCP is both sane and did not foul up, If this really went as planned, we have a massacre by nullsec players of highsec players attacking pirates. This could mean that nullsec players could be made less welcome in empire than before.

Having nullsec eventually overrun empire is one possibility, but making it more difficult for nullsec players/corps to use highsec is also a possibility.

When I started playing the worst that happened in hi sec was a can flipper. Now hi sec is one of the riskiest places to ply your trade in the game. This has happened for a reason, namely that it suits CCP. If it didn't suit CCP they would not have allowed it.

When Burn Jita happened it was with full CCP support. They knew what was going down and reinforced the node to allow it to happen. They even commented in depth on the traffic flow data they got from it. They didn't care about the hi sec community getting burned then, yet when they feed players into a null sec trap I'm supposed to believe it was an accident. The outcome may be unintended, but the intent was there to some degree.

Maybe they want to drive out the hi sec players and turn the whole universe into a free for all. It has been slowly going that way for a while.

I'm so glad I unsubbed all my accounts! I've been playing for over 2 years, always hoping that CCP would do something smart. I started having second thoughts about possibly coming back to Eve in order to join this event. Nope! So glad I missed it! I actually was initially disappointed I wouldn't be able to attend because of work. Now I know it was an epic fail, right up there with the recent scorpion debacle and the "we support RMT" through timecode sales.

The sad thing is that I really want Eve to be a good game. I don't know why CCP continues to shoot itself in the foot.

i don't get the whole RMT = timecode sales. i really really don't. I think it's more likely an RMT setup when you see LOL deaths in Jita of some n00b ship dropping PLEX...and idiots like the above anon going "omg stupid n00b!" when it's an open secret RMTers use that to mask their bot isk laundering.

Personally I think live events should be limited to PvE'ish events that promote the back story. If devs want to play NPC's great - but the line between dev and player should be maintained. Just more dev meddling in the sandbox imo.

That would be exactly the "omg eve is now a theme park" argument made by hardcore pvpers whining cuz their gatecamps and spies were stymied by 'cheating' devs locking gates and bridging an assault force to break the gatecamps.

Reading this I am wondering if it was a good idea to start playing this game after all. If such ***holes play FC and lead people into their destruction by abusing an event just to have some pervert fun and compensation for their low-life I am not sure it my time is worht playing with these people the same game. I shouldn't be surprised how low people can be, I should know better actually, but this really is unbelievable. To tell the truth, if I would be CCP I would set all key players who participated in this zero SP and zero wallet and the refund the ones who have suffered from it. I really hope it is costing them at least some hundred or thousand players, Im certainly considering quitting the game before getting into it any deeper...

Assuming you wrote that comment in earnest, I don't think Eve suits you well. This may seem wrong for a portion of the high-sec players, but, as Jester indicated, this is pretty must standard order of the day for the nullsec guys. You don't get to have second thoughts when the shooting starts, or it's you that gets a fast trip to the clone bay.

don't believe everything you read... if you have a brain and you like a challenge... eve is your place... nothing comes easy, but in the end its worth it... a hard earned victory is just that much sweeter...

uhm..you put the emphasis on the wrong saliva. How 'low' people can get? what the hell, man, let's play that to it's logical conclusion with your moral high horse:

you wanted to join an event that led to null sec? you should have no umbrage with the denizens of such a place. period.

your vitriol shouldn't even be focused on 'how' ccp went about screwing the pooch.

you should be angry that CCP are clueless dingbats who don't even comprehend the mindset required to even appreciate how trollish your irrational statement is.

why don't you go ask for a 'winbutton' cheatcode for eve-offline. for that's what you are implying, since you didn't really say anything other than be preachy. I can't even guess at your reasons for playing eve let along why you quit...personally, i think your post was a 30 seconds thought up troll. *shrug*

I'm on a free trial account. I went to see what this event was all about and what an event looked like as did others in rookie chat and new player corporation. We had no idea what this event was supposed to be and frankly, I still don't.

My personal observation is that event was so bad it actually made an Areanet Guild Wars 2 event look pro. That's not easy to do. I really didn't think another game could make GW2 look good. You can't do that off the cuff. You have to possess an instinct for being that bad. It has to be part of your genetic makeup. in all the years I've played computer games, the only thing close to that kind of bad was the launch of Red Orchestra 2. A launch so bad it instantly murdered the entire franchise and might eventually be the demise of Tripwire in the long run.

I'm 14 day and out. from what I've seen in my 8 days in this game is the community is terrible. I couldn't recommend this game if they paid people to play it. Based on qwhat I've witnessed, the game is trash and CCP I simply can't decide if it's trolling its' own players or it's just that remarkably bad. I'm impressed, but not in a good way. The free demo is too much contact with this game in my opinion. I can't tell if the null sec players attitudes are the worst part of the game or if it's CCP itself. It looks like a race for last place.

That's my impression, and I never even made it all the way down to the free kill funnel CCP put together. The lag was insane. I like the idea of a single server but it clearly doesn't work.

I swapped to a clean clone and disposable ship and joined the highsec fleets on my lunch break, expecting some interesting storyline event during which I would sooner or later explode gloriously. I dropped out long before we reached the gate camp. My two chief complaints were:

#1 - 23 jumps through highsec was an unbelievably poor choice. The rally point should have been on the edge of highsec within a few jumps of the target, or highsec players should have been titan-bridged in (which would have been even cooler for those of us who rarely see caps). Being slaughtered by null-sec players was inevitable, but there are ways to make getting blapped fun. Null sec players were going to get there first anyway. No need to be cagey about the final destination.

#2 - Information flow was minimal to non-existent. For me, the main reason for trying to participate was to be part of the lore/event. I don't mind inevitably dying in a fire if I get to follow the larger narrative. If I want a half-asses, NFWG null sec roam, then I'll join the RVBGanked fleets.

Consequently, I suggest two things: (1) minimize group travel for these events, and (2) have and publicize a read-only "live reporting" channel where CCP (possibly in the guise of a SCOPE reporter) copies the dialog from the CCP actors and reports on the major developments in the events.

CCP basically set up several thousand of it's customers for a huge gank. It was a total stitch-up. I'm no expert but humiliating a large portion of your clients doesn't seem to me to be a good business decision.

I don't think CCP can afford the luxury of gravely offending thousands of it's customers for the sole purpose of providing their goon alts hundreds of free killmails.

I see what you are getting at, but there is a fine line between getting the players to distrust the empires and getting the players to distrust ccp. if they had done the whole empire screws things up shtick but had kept some "non-aligned" commanders to reign in the chaos afterwards, but before hiting the battle, maybe it would be a option. but this doesn't come across as an in-characters mess up so the blame is on the actor. That said I would love to see something like what you are suggesting.

if it had been done right, then yes totally agree with the sentiment that no matter how expertly CCP FCed, RPed, properly planned and prepared this ambitious event it would still have been a welp fleet. The only rational explanation for it would be rubicon's theme.

I wonder...is CCP truly meaning they are crossing a line in believing nullseccer brainwashing hook line and sinker? That high sec carebears are the sole bastion of lazy risk averse players who are the minority of customers...and that a few cracked eggs will make a wonderful omelette?

My thought when they announced it was "ccp is going to cordone off a path and make this fun" then I realized wtf? every null corp is going to be gunning for this fleet. Then ccp put a defender option and I had hopes again, then realized again high bears vs null bears (I don't buy that carebare type crap). Was a slaughter waiting to happen. Here is the thing the announcement really seemed to hint at an eve effort "all of eve vs some game destroying assault" but if you think about it from a sandbox perspective it never had a chance.

Oh one last thing did anyone notice the core systems didn't tidi to 10%? I did (I think a hardware trail happened, and it was simi successful).

Answer is simple and appropriate. Fire the CCP planner of the event. There are thousands of competent people who want to work for CCP and since eve is like "real life" CCP should be like real life too and have consequences. Note, I did not participate and live in WH space so am not particularly biased on this one. Event manager - designing an event where people fly 23 jumps to their death in a gate camp just gets unsubscribes obviously from your new player pipeline. You should be fired. Period. Welcome to Eve and real life - it has consequences.

The other consequence is that we used to have a couple CCP events per year, and now we won't have any. One thing their high management is quick to learn is that everything that fails and makes people unsubscribe must be dropped immediately, and this one fits the criteria. Some people stated they will never participate in live events again, ironically neither will CCP.

As I understand it, these events are actually run by "volunteers". Now, are they paid employees working on off-hours, or ISD members with special in-game powers, I don't know.

But yeah, bottom line, there should be serious repercussions from this. But there won't be. The null sec cartels had a grand old time, and that is all that matters to their friends and in-game comrades inside CCP.

They need to fire someone if they want people to trust the next thing CCP says or does. Otherwise it's fake.

Also the volunteer excuse sounds like something CCP is floating to try to hide behind. Then stop dedicating staff to stuff people don't really care about much like tweaks to one of the zillion modules in the game and endless rebalances which turn out to be excuses for content and only a few elite tournament PvP players care much about. Fire the person that decided to dedicate staff to rebalances instead of content like events a lot of people obviously are starved for and do care about.

Pathetic that there is a hidden threat of "well if you don't like an atrocioulsy run event then we won't fix it and we won't have more events and you obviously are starved for some new content like events aren't you, well then you better like the horrible ones you got and be happy with that".

" They directed traffic into the target systems." I checked local logs and they did f... all in Sarum, people learned about it from twitter then started moving all at once. Why you would announce a not-a-staging system in the first place is beyond me, the TiDi swamp trek was completely avoidable, had they just announced a more general location, like a region. Also one should not have to piece together the event from multiple info sources, both in-game and out-of-game. The whole thing felt like: Hey, take 10 minutes out of your agile sprint and run the live event!

"In short: CCP expected them to organize themselves .."

This is completely impossible with a PUG group in one hour, without coms, OP-sec, fleet comps, everything really.

0.0 slaughtering the PUG fleets was the norm on the past events, I don't think anybody really expected any other outcome. I don't think anybody with a lick of sense is mad about that.

I think the point of Rubicon is that Null is coming to you. Perhaps CCP will look at what happens in the real world when invading armies come ... and prepare a place for the refugees in New Eden. Otherwise they'll seek refuge in another mmo or RL.

Walker, I am sure CCP hopes that nullsec players will spend more and more money on new accounts that will replace players leaving the high sec. And yes, after this event I am certain you are right in that they plan to make everything nullsec. Just look at the Odyssey trailer and llisten to CCP Seagull's talks. They plan on removing PvE side of things.

Agree with server restore comment - and fire someone. Does not affect me either way since was not in the fight and the PVE I do is not done in hisec, however even those who might object, some of the dumber nullbear types, need to think it through because otherwise there is a new player exodus or at least players who refuse to participate in content. I mean yes part of me is absolutely laughing because what other game would do this (where the game designers lead one part of their player base to a multi hour death march which ends in a gank) however I'm not sure the newer players would be so amused and word gets out. Do a server restore, give SP. Say oops we intended something else and we apologize we will organize better on the next event. Saying this is eve doesn't cut it unless the same rules apply to CCP, they too have to pay when they screw up.

this is what Rubicon is all about. care bears are leaving EVE for good. that is the no turning back part. High sec is no longer going to exist in the size and shape it currently does. pure high sec bears will adapt or leave the game and the rest of eve will be better off for it. this is the team of ultima online getting back to its roots. its pvp all the time 24/7 or go home. i cant wait for this new, new eden to emerge. the tears will float my boat for another decade

and if this means everyone is forced to join a large nullsec corp or in the direction the game is going now, one particular enormous nullsec corp, then it may be that you boat and this game won't last long. Ultima Online included a lot of different playstyles, that was one of it's strengths, are you sure you really played it?

*whistles mournfully* wow, dude, that was epic. lol. Not a good business decision if you're right...and based purely on this seemingly precursor to Rubicon's theme of anti-empire then perhaps that truly is the bridge CCP is willing to cross, brainwashed as they are.

I think though that you wildly under estimate the already crazily downplayed population base that are 'carebear' (the risk averse, high sec kind who aren't RMT botters)...the silent walk with their wallet kind.

But, that's just my theory. I don't mind your vision actually...be kind of nice to actually have a MMOG that is truly hardcore pvp as it's vision. Not been my experience that such sci-fi mmogs full of 'killer' types survive economically, as was Richard Bartle's opinion also.

*shrug* Be nice if tears really do float your boat for another decade. truly, not being sarcastic...i just think it's a pipe dream and you're smoking crack.

Hey remember those minutes that they were supposed to do? I would really like CCP to stop having to go into damage limitation and get them out. Rubicon will be released before the minutes are at this rate.

Really I am rolling my eyes at this mess up of a live event. It will be interesting to see how much CCP says it is what it expected to happen, as that will give high sec dwellers the information they need to decide whether to keep subscribing. Why oh why do CCP do this to themselves.

I live in a WH with my corp, RL friends exclusively. I could give two hoots about it personally, but when the game loses players and people to shoot and content makers, we are all in trouble. Yes even you people at the back.

Given the fact that thousands of players tried to attend the last major live event, the CCP folks who put this together MUST have known how this was going to turn out. Any even moderately experienced EVE player with half a brain who was told the plan for this event, could have foreseen the result.

As such, either:

A. The live team who thought this out is simply completely out of touch with the playerbase and/or didn't consult with someone who is more in touch.

or

B. The team involved actually intended to essentially AWOX everyone from high sec.

I mean, even if they genuinely DID think it would go swimmingly for whatever hair brained reason, the organizers MUST have known what the result was going to be with the pre-built gate camps. Yet, they told everyone to jump anyway.

They should have cancelled it or figured something else out. At the very least, had the NPC actors say, "we're too late, the gate is too heavily defended. Jumping will mean almost certain death. Still, for those who want to try after coming all this way, we will jump in 2 minutes".

CCP had ample time to see what has happening during the TiDi trip there, to figure out how to proceed, so that's no excuse either.

IMO CCP just needs to stop trying to do these huge live events that involve getting huge fleets together. If they want to have such an event, then do it in null sec, where the players there actually appreciate huge TiDi fights. Though they should expect such events to get shit on by null sec griefing groups.

Instead, CCP should put together large events that span days or weeks, and involve as many of the player base who want to participate. Add special missions or exploration sites that drop special loot that needs to be collecting en masse by the player base, perhaps with competing groups. Then require those to be transported to certain systems in low sec or null sec, where they get counted towards the end goal (whatever it may be). If this was supposed to be an empire vs pirate faction event, then have high sec site drops that need transport to NPC null sec, and NPC null sec drops that need to be transported to high sec, where carrying them in high sec subjects you to a suspect flag. Have the items in cargo interfere with cloaking and cyno jumping, and there you go, you have an event that everyone can get involved with, the result is decided by the players, encourages players put themselves in harm's way, and even gives players who don't want to participate some content as well in the form of more targets in high, low and null sec.

"Those that choose to quit or not subscribe back over this I have no sympathy for. It's a learning experience and by no means are live events the primary reason to play."

The lesson here is that some people are more equal than others. Highsec players don't merit CCP attention or care.

If CCP had merely treated them the exact same as the nullsec side, it would have been better. Yet we see the forced jumping under time dilation. Poor and misleading communications. Abandoning the fleet part way. Ending the event before one side even arrived.

People seem to have forgotten all about EVE's golden rule #1: Do not fly what you can't afford to lose.

Anyone who complains about getting killed, especially if they were stupid enough to bring their billion isk ships & clones to a live event, deserve what they got.

I didn't hear about this, but I was in enough channels, from both ends, I'm laughing at both sides. Nullsec got a bunch of free kills, along the lines of suicide ganking in empire (without the Concord assisted suicide) which translates to boring. And yes, it was indeed the average tuesday evening sort of event.

Highseccers, came out in all their carebearing, "we expect lots of free shit, for no work and no risk" ignorance, and got owned for it. EVE was marketed for years as a piracy, and high-risk/high-reward game. To go to any live-event, in a non-pvp fit, with disposible clone is just a big a shoot me neon sign, as any officer fit mission runner.

But empire bears, will be bears, and continue to expect the game revolves around them. Nullseccers will continue to ridicule and laugh at empire residents, despite having the same expectation the game revolves around their whims. in the end, nothing has really changed.

Not one person has said they expected a single reward outside of the experience. Nope, but you in your nullsheep self have to whine about "carebears"

Also, wake up to the fact that the experience given to these players was 2hrs of being screwed with then fed to waiting nullsec. I really hope CCP counter trolls you and next "live event" they feed the null sec people to hundreds of waiting Jove Titans with 15sec reloads on their doomsday. You know, so you can try it on. Don't forget 30 jumps at 10% and the event ending when you get one jump out.

Rubicon: No turning back. Also known as the song of the lemmings. I have a bad feeling about rubicon. if the name was not enough. The installation of the military dictatorship in Rome. No turning back, it sounds brave, it sounds foolhardy, it sounds like ccp setting us all up in the funnel for the killing zone.

I hope that Eve does not become inimical to my play style I have rather enjoyed the last year. Just at the moment depending on good judgement from CCP does not feel comfortable

oh, bullshit, Jester. herein is your blindspot: "Remember how I said the other day that the community is going to become more divisive and insular over the next couple of years? Yup, this. Today's live event made it worse."

someone please point out to the prolific blogger that (1) he's lumped the CCP 'community' squarely into the pvp camp (2) he's blithely ignoring the fact it's the hard core pvpers who've convinced CCP there's no other endgame in town.

So what, gentle reader does this say of our most beloved CCP? That they simply have no understanding anymore of what a carebear is other than "spineless wimp who needs to HTFU" and probably have as their mission statement "it takes a few broken eggs to make an omelette"

What, gentle reader does this say of Jester's Trek and it's insidious PVP bias and how they sugar coat the poison pill? That CCP will be forced to pick a side and man up...oh wait, was that man up then pick the non-pussy side by default?

What does this imply? That the only risk averse group are the carebears and that 'risk management' is something brave pvpers engage in every breath they take. lulz.

What is the corollary? The game dies because CCP cannot comprehend the lickspittle story they're being fed is a massive lie. The lie that leading lambs to the slaughter will make lions out of them. That's not an CCP event; That's a massive troll instead.

CCP doesn't actually give a shit cuz they've bought the lie hook line and sinker...they've probably even come to believe it's always been their original vision for this game that pvp is the endgame (the 'core' if you will)

I hate to say it however I think you have a strong point there. Been watching Jester and think even he is more part of the problem than part of the cure even though he does belong to a smaller corp and even though I voted for him for CSM. After all where does he live? 0.0. What corp does he tend to tread most lightly around? Goonswarm, whose rise to prominence also co-ioncided with the flattening off of the growth rate of this MMO in 2009. Yes CCP is now so blindly biased because all the input they get is from players who are just fine with towing a large corporate powerblock line in their sparetime. Some of us don't want play to mirror work, it's just that simple.

We are anywhere in the game that ISN'T a huge corp and that includes hi-sec. Some are there not necessarily avoiding PvP but avoiding being ordered around. They like some disorganization and gasp even soloing occasionally. Me, I'll join anything that isn't a large corp, I've spent most of my real life in a large corp already why do it in my spare time? RvB is about as large corpish as I'll tolerate and that is because they are nice folks out just for fun. Have joined smaller WH, RvB even faction or small scale PvP in low and NULL. All fine. But do I want to make money for Mittani and co in my spare time or some other mega power block no thanks and that's looking like where we are all going to be forced with the route CCP is taking. CCP is the lemming jumping off the bridge, not us. We just move on to another game when they annihilate our playstyle.

And those of you that say Dota or Ultima Online works - well actually that proves my point - those support a playstyle other than huge corporate blob. No, I am not suggesting something stupid like Eve needs to be either of those games because both of those games will do it better and Eve will die then. What I am saying is don't annihilate a smaller style of gameplay. But hey, CPP is obviously not listening. Hope they enjoyed there time making games because it's going to be over soon. It will be their company and their game they destroy, not nullsec.

This is not Jester's bag and not his fault.It's sometimes hard to remember that CCPs IP is nothing but entertainment. These are Important Pixels, and it is how they feed their families, but it's still just a ball game. “If you win say nothing, if you lose say less." ~ Paul Brown

quandry: that makes no sense. It's his blog and i'm commenting on his opinion. I am finding "fault" in his "bag"...As for your point about CCP? They're owned by Iceland's only Billionaire who some say is being used by the russians...so, yeah, feed that into your pipe and smoke it

but, seriously, Quandry...Your 'Very Important Pixels' are families...I assume you have been simply parroting what Jester said recently about the executive job at CCP. You haven't said anything about 'entertainment' per se, but a very poor association between the entertainment business and a "ball game"...which, really, doesn't have a point at all.Yes, it's a business. we all know that, but that's not what you came out and said is it? I mean, really, that was your whole point.

But, to assume you had a point, about CCP not really needing any competence when it comes to interacting IG with players, nor any OOC competence when it came to damage control. Well, they have a bias and that bias has been severely hampering their message...their talking points...their position papers."nothing but..." That's a conceit. What you are implying is that those that matter don't mind. That they don't have any bias on account it's simply a business model and their bias is 'family'...yet, your moral focus is on good of the family and being incompetent at communication and getting the message across is one of the cardinal sins of a capitalist economy (or whatever the hell we have in the world today)

What we have in the world today is a planet being poisoned at a frighteningly rapid rate. On that scale the escapism EVE provides and the faults we find in it pales in significance. I'll openly admit that I am incompetent communicator, Jester isn't, but he frankly stated that his interest in EVEs lore is somewhat forced.I'm pretty sure CCP tutted at him again over this so he could do without the heat from both sides. I don't mind being a heat shield on occasion.I'm vocal on this subject because my interest is elect and my mind demands that my favourite fantasy universe makes the kind of sense the real world lacks. See my opening sentence which I personally find to be devastatingly depressing. Erm, yeah, what was the question?

'In short: CCP expected them to organize themselves and to play EVE the way we null-sec players have been doing it for years.'No. No CCP did not expect them to organize themselves and form effective fleets as the time frame would not allow such a thing to happen. The only thing CCP could have expected is a blob of various ship types/doctrines/non-standard/non pvp fits with no logistical support lead by Joe Blogs1,2 & 3 to overwhelme the organised experience nullsec forces.

PS. I don't know where you got that statement from but like the rest of this 'event' it is hilariously funny.

On the bright side. If anyone in CCP still has half a brain (and I'm beginning to doubt they do but hey it's possible) they would notice that people are desperate and I mean desperate for event content.

People were so despterate they waited hours in time dialation just to get to a destination most were ok with being blown up at. Most were ok with even waiting hours to be blow up they are that desparate. Most are mad that it turned out to be just another nullsc gatecamp slaughter (which everyone can experience all the time) instead of some battle where at least they got to get off a few shots.

The bar for making people happy was incredibly low and yet CCP managed to not make that bar.

So catch a clue, CCP, finally, while you still have a game. Move some of your more competent devs from boring rebalancing which only hardare pvp or pve cares about to live events and fire whoever put this fiasco together so people will trust you. Good new is your players are telling you exactly what they want, exactly what they care about.

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